focus on procedures and organisation (routines), strategies and processes, skills, craft and techniques
composed of four major parts: Connection (teacher puts today's work in the context of children's ongoing work as writers and explicitly names what they'll be learning about today); Teach (explicit teaching of one important concept that will make their writing better, often drawing upon own writing, children's literature or student's writing); Active Engagement (students talk to a partner or examine their own writing for evidence of the concept); Link (encouraging students to try out the strategy in their writing that day or to add it to their toolkit of strategies)
- 5-10 minutes long
- multi-level
- precedes independent writing time
- explicit instruction
- assessment based
- focus on procedures and organisation (routines), strategies and processes, skills, craft and techniques
- composed of four major parts: Connection (teacher puts today's work in the context of children's ongoing work as writers and explicitly names what they'll be learning about today); Teach (explicit teaching of one important concept that will make their writing better, often drawing upon own writing, children's literature or student's writing); Active Engagement (students talk to a partner or examine their own writing for evidence of the concept); Link (encouraging students to try out the strategy in their writing that day or to add it to their toolkit of strategies)
Mini Lesson ChallengesExamples of Mini Lesson Topics
Mini Lesson Planning Sheet
A huge number of fabulous mini-lessons and units of work
http://www.jmeacham.com/writing.mini.lessons.htm
Links to a whole year of minilesson units for a Grade One class
http://www.thelearningpad.net/writers_worshop_mini.html
Ideas for mini-lessons to launch Writers Workshop
http://www.wrsd.net/literacy/WWlaunch.cfm
How to get started with Writers Workshop and mini-lessons to go with them
http://www.tips-for-teachers.com/StartingWritersWorkshop.htm
Another very useful resource full of mini-lessons for Writers Workshop
http://www.davidson.k12.nc.us/education/components/scrapbook/default.php?sectiondetailid=28162&linkid=nav-menu-container-4-124970
Ideas on how to assess student writing to gain ideas for possible mini-lessons
http://blogs.scholastic.com/top_teaching/2010/10/assess-plan-teach-part-1-looking-at-student-work.html
http://blogs.scholastic.com/top_teaching/2010/11/assess-plan-teach-part-2-strategies-to-support-young-writers.html
Anchor Charts
'Anchor charts are like footprints left by the learning journey we have undertaken with our students'.
Some examples of anchor charts
http://www.adsit.net/default.php?Submit=Photo_Gallery&Menu=Literacy&SubMenu=Writers_Workshop
Has some good photos of anchor charts used in a Kindergarten classroom
http://www.hallco.org/literacy/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=10
Also has a range of anchor chart photos